Building pathways for co-designing UI/UX: Ideas and tools

As digital technologies continue to shape many of our social interactions, UI/UX designers play an ever-more-important role in creating experiences that meet our collective, emerging needs. However, one significant challenge in designing for diverse audiences is building personalized experiences that resonate with a broad range of users.

Conventional design processes often position the designer as the sole expert. But this falls short of leveraging the creative potential that exists among those who are impacted by the design outcomes. This is where a shift toward co-creation with users can transform our design possibilities.

By bridging the gap between designers and users, we can amplify voices that are often left out, ensuring that our products and services are meaningful and equitable.

While recent efforts in design have advocated for the need to move from “designing for” users toward “designing with” them, a lot remains to be explored when it comes to effectively fostering collaboration and shared ownership throughout the design process.

Similarly, we need to challenge the idea of a one-size-fits-all approach and instead work toward design outcomes that are informed by lived experiences and responsive to the needs of the most significantly impacted communities.

In this article, I explore why co-creation is important for crafting impactful user experiences and how it enables designers to cultivate meaningful relationships with users rooted in mutual collaboration and trust.

Bridging the power gap

Although a user-centric approach is foundational to how we practice UX design, there is a growing need to reflect on how we engage users. Are we merely observing them, or are we inviting them to actively shape design outcomes?

At its core, this question also implicates the concentration of power within design spaces. While designers can often empathize with users, this alone does not necessarily lead to improved design outcomes.

Often, the design biases we carry as designers feed into our work and reproduce the status quo, inadvertently marginalizing those whose needs are rendered invisible throughout the design process. This can manifest as exclusion or misrepresentation, leaving critical needs and perspectives unaddressed.

For instance, rather than relying solely on usability testing to validate pre-made designs, a co-design idea would involve users from the beginning, integrating their feedback and ideas into the entire design process. This would lead to more inclusive interfaces that address real-world challenges rather than assumptions.

Redefining collaboration with users

To define co-design, we need to understand what community engagement looks like and how it can be enabled and supported through our design practices.

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Rather than viewing participation from users as an absolute or situated within a binary construct, it is important to recognize the degree and nature of their participation.

Often, designers engage with community members in a limited capacity — where participation is restricted to a few steps of the design process, and users are not afforded any significant decision-making power.

For effective collaboration to take place, it is essential to involve community members as equal partners, acknowledging their lived and experiential knowledge.

Co-design is about building reciprocal relationships and creating space for meaningful dialogue where users have an opportunity to influence strategic decision-making.

This approach invites diverse perspectives, challenging designers to step outside their comfort zones and thus enriching the design process.

Conventional methods of user engagement rely heavily on observation rather than true collaboration. Users are treated as passive participants to gain insights from instead of being embraced as active contributors who help shape the design direction and outcomes.

Bringing in action

Co-creation is meant to be an emergent and iterative process. Although as designers we often solicit feedback from users, we need to take additional steps to ensure that our design process is continuously adapting and evolving based on our mutual learning with community members.

One effective method for co-design is through design thinking workshops.

These collaborative sessions allow designers and users to brainstorm ideas, build prototypes, and test solutions in real time. Incorporating such exercises into your co-design process helps to ensure designs are both practical and aligned with user expectations.

What’s the buzz around co-design?

In recent years, co-design has become an increasingly popular area of interest. There is significant potential for co-design to lead to more impactful design outcomes. We must maintain focus on what co-design is, when and where co-design is appropriate, and what possibilities open up when co-design is leveraged effectively.

The rise in interest stems from:

• The increasing emphasis on user-centered design methodologies
• A growing awareness of the need for ethical and inclusive practices in design
• The success stories of organizations that have adopted co-design to create sustainable and user-validated solutions

Upholding the integrity of co-design

It is important that we resist co-design becoming a buzzword and maintain its integrity as a process to enable responsible co-creation.

I view co-design as an ethical commitment and relational responsibility that we, as designers, strive to uphold as we practice with communities — leveraging our access, privilege, and resources to help build sustainable outcomes.

Co-design vs. participatory design

While there is a lot of shared discourse on co-design and participatory design, they are often conflated and referred to interchangeably. They differ significantly, though:

• Participatory design — Invites users to contribute to specific parts of the process, often as participants rather than collaborators. For example, a participatory design session might involve users providing feedback on wireframes
• Co-design — Centers on mutual collaboration and shared ownership, with users actively shaping solutions alongside designers throughout the process. For example, a co-design session might involve users collaborating with designers to conceptualize the wireframes from the start

I think it is important to highlight and reiterate the difference between participation and co-creation. Often, I find that we misattribute steps in the design process as “co-design activities” without actually creating the conditions for meaningful collaboration to happen.

What are the potential benefits of co-creating user experiences?

There is a growing awareness of how co-creation is helping boost product and service innovation while opening up pathways to catalyze collaboration and creativity.

When we approach co-creation through the lens of building relationships and strengthening strategic partnerships, it enables us to deliver a more meaningful impact.

• Co-creation allows us to expand our circle of influence by involving a diverse set of stakeholders, which allows room for multiplicity and enriches the overall design ecosystem
• Co-creation can often lead to deeper and more nuanced insights that spark creative solutions that may not have emerged through conventional design methods
• Co-creation allows us to intentionally build relationships where users are valued as partners and stakeholders, fostering trust and creating a sense of shared purpose that drives sustained engagement

Let us consider the example of de-bi, a decentralized biobanking platform designed to support patient engagement. This emerging startup noticed a dire need to transform the culture of biomedical and specimen research, making it more transparent and collaborative.

Typically, when patients donate a specimen for clinical research purposes, they are kept in the dark and have no way of knowing what impact is created as a result of their contribution.

De-bi saw this as an opportunity to not only facilitate a confidential and secure way for patients to stay informed of how their sample is being used but also potentially benefit from any significant outcomes.

This model of engagement values patients as active stakeholders and creates space for mutual benefit and reciprocity.

De-bi’s founder and CEO, Marielle Gross, reported that “in two months, over a thousand people signed up to find out what happened to the tumors and other samples they donated for research…That’s tremendous patient engagement.”

What are some common challenges in facilitating co-design?

While co-design can add significant value to our design and innovation processes, it certainly comes with its own challenges and limitations:

• Time constraints — Co-designing requires significant time for planning, engagement, and iteration. Building relationships and cultivating trust can be a slow and gradual process that may feel at odds with fast-paced environments driven by urgency culture
• Power imbalances — Unless there is an intentional effort to disrupt power differentials, it is difficult to create a space where everyone feels comfortable and safe enough to contribute authentically. This may lead to dominant perspectives being prioritized at the risk of marginalizing voices that do not conform to the status quo
• Cultural barriers — Co-creation is difficult to reproduce at scale because it requires adaptation and cultural sensitivity in order to truly be effective. Differences in expectations, social norms, linguistic barriers, etc., can hinder collaboration if they are not appropriately taken into account with attention and care
• Resource allocation — Limited access to resources can restrict the extent and nature of collaboration, making it difficult to engage in a way that is mutually beneficial and allows room for creative possibilities to emerge
• Conflicting priorities — Different stakeholders involved throughout the process may have diverging goals or interests that do not necessarily align. This can make effective collaboration difficult to facilitate

Building effective pathways for co-creation

For co-creation to be truly effective and impactful, we need to intentionally invest time, labor, and resources, as well as commit to moving beyond surface-level engagement. This also requires us to shift how we engage and practice.

It is also important to highlight that co-design is not meant to be a standard, cookie-cutter methodology that applies universally across contexts. Rather, it requires us to actively create the conditions for mutual collaboration and shared decision-making.

I believe that moving toward a model of ethical and responsible co-creation means actively transforming our culture, mindset, and practice as designers. This needs to happen simultaneously at multiple levels of systems change (see figure below):

Here are some principles to keep in mind while facilitating co-creation:

• Accountability and transparency — Clear and consistent communication about expectations and goals ensures mutual alignment and fosters trust. Community members should understand how their contributions will help shape design outcomes and where they fit in the larger design ecosystem \
• Reciprocity — As designers, we should approach the process with humility and openness, recognizing the breadth of knowledge that different stakeholders and users bring to the table. Building mutual trust ensures that everyone feels valued and invested in the process \
• Accessible engagement — Effective co-creation limits barriers that may hinder participation; this is important to ensure that people can contribute in meaningful ways that are culturally responsive and inclusive of their needs
• Emergence and iteration — Co-creation is a dynamic process that requires sustained engagement over time. Through iteration and embracing new possibilities as they arise, co-creation leads to solutions that are both innovative and relevant
• Equity and power-sharing — Designers must actively dismantle power imbalances, creating space for diverse perspectives to be heard and influence decision-making

These principles are non-exhaustive and meant to be a starting point to help us move toward ethical and responsible co-creation.

An example

Let’s consider an example that highlights several of these principles.

The Data Workers’ Inquiry project is a community-based project that empowers data workers to lead their own inquiry in their respective workplaces. By collaborating with data workers who are directly impacted by workplace exploitation and creating space for them to guide the research on their own terms, this project opens up possibilities for ethical co-creation and mutual capacity-building.

Closing thoughts

Co-design isn’t just a method; it’s a mindset. By investing in relationships and collaboration, we can create designs that are not only functional but also transformative. When we shift power, center users as co-creators, and prioritize equity, we open the door to more impactful and inclusive outcomes.

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